defrager alternatives.

2oldman wrote:

5er4ever wrote:
I know I will never defrag my 3tb external that is almost full.

My goodness, that's a lot of data.

I backed up my VHS tape library onto my hard drive. My Old VCR's are failing.

I also backup about 5 pc's, tablets and 3 smart phones because I am the admin guy.

Not to mention the 30gb's of family photos and videos.

shum02 wrote:

joebedford wrote:
My NTFS has never needed defragging.

Defragging my NTFS files made a huge decrease on server backup times. Still do it.

Microsoft NOT including a defrag utility on NT because they said NTFS didn't need it was an incredible joke.

And if you read their tech forum they acknowledge that.

Dave

joebedford wrote:
My NTFS has never needed defragging.

Defragging my NTFS files made a huge decrease on server backup times. Still do it.

Microsoft NOT including a defrag utility on NT because they said NTFS didn't need it was an incredible joke.

5er4ever wrote:
I know I will never defrag my 3tb external that is almost full.

My goodness, that's a lot of data.

2oldman wrote:

sherlock62 wrote:
So, so much misinformation in this thread.

It's risky coming here for solid technical information.

Maybe, but isn't it also fun! ;)

I know I will never defrag my 3tb external that is almost full. I would not live long enough to see it finish. Not sure letting a program run for 24 or 300 hours at full speed on a drive is actually doing any amount of good that a normal mortal human could recognize.
But wouldn't it be nice to see all those pretty little green squares line up properly?

Just saying, I see no need.

And you base that on...?

My NTFS has never needed defragging.

Well, this topic will be in a loop soon enough and I have dealt with it for many years (like others here).

In the beginning: Like the 80's.

- & still true today A rotating disk drive is about the slowest activity.

In the Middle: Like the 90's.

- Cache was added to drives to speed up access to the 'next part' of the files in-use.

In the later middle: Like 2k

- Fetch, pre-fetch and super fetch was added to obtain the next block of data BEFORE the actual program asks for the data.

In the end:

- SSD eliminates the slower need to do a rotational disk read/write.

- HDD have so much capacity and internal cache applied BEFORE the OS applies it's caching algorithms that it pretty much covers all issues of slowness.

Summary:

I see no need or very little need to defrag more than once per year.

Defrag activity IMHO is 10 times the volume of disk-io volume of ANY other activity a normal user would ever encounter.

We all want speed and we want to test real life speed (not the hypothetical speeds based upon fake data scenarios or BUY my software charts).

The only files that need a defrag are those that the OS loads at startup (because they do over time with hundreds of OS updates get defragmented) So to save that additional 76 milliseconds on startup time may be important).

Other files "like that copy of a movie that was scattered all over a drive and not as neat as you think it should" will be loaded, fetched, pre-fetched and super-fetched long before your application program needs the data (hence the term buffering ahead).

I have a better question for the modern user:

What % of your disk-IO's life span are assigned to non-user activity?

Like Scans for Malware, Viruses and defrag's?

Computers are like trucks. You paid $50,000 for a truck and found out that 85% of all cost were for Parking 'off the road" user activity.

My .02

Do not allow your idle time to be consumed by looking for things to do. 99% of all the computer users out there would not notice the difference between a defragged computer and a non defragged computer.

ps...... My main computer boots in 15 seconds. The other 4 take about 2 min.

fj12ryder wrote:

garry1p wrote:
Anyone know how to stop the Win 7 auto defrag?

Why would you want to do that?

x2?

On a decent current machine even if it was running you'd not even notice a performance drop - it is a background service. Same goes for virus scans.

garry1p wrote:
Anyone know how to stop the Win 7 auto defrag?

Here's a link: Configure disk defrag